SAP Bods Interview Questions and Answers

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1. What Is The Use Of Businessobjects Data Services?

Ans:

BusinessObjects Data Services provides a graphical interface that allows you to easily create jobs that extract data from heterogeneous sources, transform that data to meet the business requirements of your organization, and load the data into a single location.

2. Define Data Services Components?

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Data Services includes the following standard components:

1. 1. Designer
2. 2. Repository
3. 3. Job Server
4. 4. Engines
5. 5. Access Server
6. 6. Adapters
7. 7. Real-time Services
8. 8. Address Server
9. 9. Cleansing Packages, Dictionaries, and Directories
10. 10. Management Console

3. What Are The Steps Included In Data Integration Process?

Ans:

• Stage data in an operational datastore, data warehouse, or data mart.
• Update staged data in batch or real-time modes.
• Create a single environment for developing, testing, and deploying the entire data integration platform.
• Manage a single metadata repository to capture the relationships between different extraction and access methods and  provide integrated lineage and impact analysis.

4. Define The Terms Job, Workflow, And Dataflow?

Ans:

A job – is the smallest unit of work that you can schedule independently for execution.

A work flow – defines the decision-making process for executing data flows.

Data flows – extract, transform, and load data. Everything having to do with data, including reading sources, transforming data, and loading targets, occurs inside a data flow.

5. Arrange These Objects In Order By Their Hierarchy: Dataflow, Job, Project, And Workflow?

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1. 1. Project
2. 2. Job
3. 3. Workflow
4. 4. Dataflow

6. What Are Reusable Objects In Dataservices?

Ans:

• Job
• Workflow
• Dataflow

7. What Is A Transform?

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A transform enables you to control how datasets change in a dataflow.

8. What Is A Script?

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A script is a single-use object that is used to call functions and assign values in a workflow.

9. What Is A Real Time Job?

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Real-time jobs “extract” data from the body of the real time message received and from any secondary sources used in the job.

10. What Is An Embedded Dataflow?

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An Embedded Dataflow is a dataflow that is called from inside another dataflow.

11. What Is The Difference Between A Data Store And A Database?

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A datastore is a connection to a database.

12. How Many Types Of Data Stores Are Present In Data Services?

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Three,

1. 1. Database Datastores: provide a simple way to import metadata directly from an RDBMS.
2. 2. Application Datastores: let users easily import metadata from most Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
3. 3. Adapter Datastores: can provide access to an application’s data and metadata or just metadata.

13. What Is The Use Of Compace Repository?

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Remove redundant and obsolete objects from the repository tables.

14. What Are Memory Datastores?

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Data Services also allows you to create a database datastore using Memory as the Database type. Memory Datastores are designed to enhance processing performance of data flows executing in real-time jobs.

15. What Are File Formats?

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A file format is a set of properties describing the structure of a flat file (ASCII). File formats describe the metadata structure.

File format objects can describe files in:

1. 1. Delimited format: Characters such as commas or tabs separate each field.
2. 2. Fixed width format: The column width is specified by the user.
3. 3. SAP ERP and R/3 format.

16. Which Is Not A Data Store Type?

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File Format

17. What Is Repository? List The Types Of Repositories?

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The DataServices repository is a set of tables that holds user-created and predefined system objects, source and target metadata, and transformation rules.
There are 3 types of repositories.

1. 1. A local repository
2. 2. A central repository
3. 3. A profiler repository

18. What Is The Difference Between A Repository And A Datastore?

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A Repository is a set of tables that hold system objects, source and target metadata, and transformation rules. A Datastore is an actual connection to a database that holds data.

19. What Is The Difference Between A Parameter And A Variable

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A Parameter is an expression that passes a piece of information to a work flow, data flow or custom function when it is called in a job. A Variable is a symbolic placeholder for values.

20. When Would You Use A Global Variable Instead Of A Local Variable?

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• When the variable will need to be used multiple times within a job.
• When you want to reduce the development time required for passing values between job components.
• When you need to create a dependency between job level global variable name and job components.

21. What Is Substitution Parameter?

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The Value that is constant in one environment, but may change when a job is migrated to another environment.

22. List Some Reasons Why A Job Might Fail To Execute?

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1. 1. Incorrect syntax
2. 2. Job Server not running
3. 3. port numbers for Designer
4. 4. Job Server not matching.

23. List Factors You Consider When Determining Whether To Run Work Flows Or Data Flows Serially Or In Parallel?

Ans:

Consider the following:

• Whether or not the flows are independent of each other
• Whether or not the server can handle the processing requirements of flows running at the same time (in parallel)

24. What Does A Lookup Function Do? How Do The Different Variations Of The Lookup Function Differ?

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All lookup functions return one row for each row in the source. They differ in how they choose which of several matching rows to return.

25. List The Three Types Of Input Formats Accepted By The Address Cleanse Transform?

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1. 1. Discrete
2. 2. Multiline
3. 3. Hybrid

26. Name The Transform That You Would Use To Combine Incoming Data Sets To Produce A Single Output Data Set With The Same Schema As The Input Data Sets?

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The Merge transform.

27. What Are Adapters?

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Adapters are additional Java-based programs that can be installed on the job server to provide connectivity to other systems such as Salesforce.com or the JavaMessagingQueue. There is also a SoftwareDevelopment Kit (SDK) to allow customers to create adapters for custom applications.

28. List The Data Integrator Transforms?

Ans:

1. 1. Data_Transfer
2. 2. Date_Generation
3. 3. Effective_Date
4. 4. Hierarchy_Flattening
5. 5. History_Preserving
6. 6. Key_Generation
7. 7. Map_CDC_Operation
8. 8. Pivot Reverse Pivot
9. 9. Table_Comparison
10. 10. XML_Pipeline

29. List The Data Quality Transforms?

Ans:

• Global_Address_Cleanse
• Data_Cleanse
• Match
• Associate
• Country_id
• USA_Regulatory_Address_Cleanse

30. What Are Cleansing Packages?

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These are packages that enhance the ability of Data Cleanse to accurately process various forms of global data by including language-specific reference data and parsing rules.

31. What Is Data Cleanse?

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The Data Cleanse transform identifies and isolates specific parts of mixed data, and standardizes your data based on information stored in the parsing dictionary, business rules defined in the rule file, and expressions defined in the pattern file.

32. What Is The Difference Between Dictionary And Directory?

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Directories provide information on addresses from postal authorities. Dictionary files are used to identify, parse, and standardize data such as names, titles, and firm data.

33. Give Some Examples Of How Data Can Be Enhanced Through The Data Cleanse Transform, And Describe The Benefit Of Those Enhancements?

Ans:

1. 1. Enhancement Benefit
2. 2. Determine gender distributions and target
3. 3. Gender Codes marketing campaigns
4. 4. Provide fields for improving matching
5. 5. Match Standards results

34. A Project Requires The Parsing Of Names Into Given And Family, Validating Address Information, And Finding Duplicates Across Several Systems. Name The Transforms Needed And The Task They Will Perform?

Ans:

• Data Cleanse: Parse names into given and family.
• Address Cleanse: Validate address information.
• Match: Find duplicates.

35. Describe When To Use The Usa Regulatory And Global Address Cleanse Transforms?

Ans:

Use the USA Regulatory transform if USPS certification and/or additional options such as DPV and Geocode are required. Global Address Cleanse should be utilized when processing multi-country data.

36. Give Two Examples Of How The Data Cleanse Transform Can Enhance (append) Data?

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The Data Cleanse transform can generate name match standards and greetings. It can also assign gender codes and prenames such as Mr. and Mrs.

37. What Are Name Match Standards And How Are They Used?

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Name match standards illustrate the multiple ways a name can be represented.They are used in the match process to greatly increase match results.

38. What Are The Different Strategies You Can Use To Avoid Duplicate Rows Of Data When Re-loading A Job?

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1. 1. Using the auto-correct load option in the target table.
2. 2. Including the Table Comparison transform in the data flow.
3. 3. Designing the data flow to completely replace the target table during each execution.
4. 4. Including a preload SQL statement to execute before the table loads.

39. What Is The Use Of Auto Correct Load?

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It does not allow duplicated data entering into the target table.It works like Type 1 Insert else Update the rows based on Non-matching and matching data respectively.

40. What Is The Use Of Array Fetch Size?

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Array fetch size indicates the number of rows retrieved in a single request to a source database. The default value is 1000. Higher numbers reduce requests, lowering network traffic, and possibly improve performance. The maximum value is 5000.

41. What Is The Use Of Case Transform?

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Use the Case transform to simplify branch logic in data flows by consolidating case or decision-making logic into one transform. The transform allows you to split a data set into smaller sets based on logical branches.

42. What Must You Define In Order To Audit A Data Flow?

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You must define audit points and audit rules when you want to audit a data flow.

43. What Is The Difference Between Oltp And A Data Warehouse?

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1. 1. Indexes: OLTP system has only few indexes while in an OLAP system there are many indexes for performance optimization.
2. 2. Joins: In an OLTP system, large number of joins and data is normalized however in an OLAP system there are less joins and de-normalized.
3. 3. Aggregation: In an OLTP system data is not aggregated while in an OLAP database more aggregations are used.

44. Why Do We Need A Staging Area In An Etl Process?

Ans:

There is a staging area that is required during ETL load. There are various reasons why a staging area is required:

1. 1. As source systems are only available for specific period of time to extract data and this time is less than total data load time so Staging area allows you to extract the data from source system and keep it in staging area before time slot is ended.
2. 2. Staging area is required when you want to get data from multiple data sources together. If you want to join two or more systems together. Example- You will not be able to perform a SQL query joining two tables from two physically different databases.
3. 3. Data extractions time slot for different systems vary as per the time zone and operational hours.
4. 4. Data extracted from source systems can be used in multiple data warehouse system, Operation Data stores, etc.
5. 5. During ETL you can perform complex transformations that allows you to perform complex transformations and require extra area to store the data.

45. What Is Sap Data Services?

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SAP BO Data Services is an ETL tool used for Data integration, data quality, data profiling and data processing and allows you to integrate, transform trusted data to data warehouse system for analytical reporting.
BO Data Services consists of a UI development interface, metadata repository, data connectivity to source and target system and management console for scheduling of jobs.

46. What Is A Repository In Bods? What Are The Different Types Of Repositories In Bods?

Ans:

Repository is used to store meta-data of objects used in BO Data Services. Each Repository should be registered in Central Management Console CMC and is linked with single or many job servers which is responsible to execute jobs that are created by you.

There are three types of Repositories:

• Local Repository: It is used to store the metadata of all objects created in Data Services Designer like project, jobs, data flow, work flow, etc.
• Central Repository: It is used to control the version management of the objects and is used for multiuse development. Central Repository stores all the versions of an application object so it allows you to move to previous versions.
• Profiler Repository: This is used to manage all the metadata related to profiler tasks performed in SAP BODS designer. CMS Repository stores metadata of all the tasks performed in CMC on BI platform. Information Steward Repository stores all the metadata of profiling tasks and objects created in information steward.

47. What Is Single Object And Reusable Objects In Data Services?

Ans:

Reusable Objects:
Most of the objects that are stored in repository can be reused. When a reusable objects is defined and save in the local repository, you can reuse the object by creating calls to the definition. Each reusable object has only one definition and all the calls to that object refer to that definition. Now if definition of an object is changed at one place you are changing object definition at all the places where that object appears. An object library is used to contain object definition and when an object is drag and drop from library, it means a new reference to an existing object is created.

Single Use Objects:
All the objects that are defined specifically to a job or data flow, they are called single use objects. Example-specific transformation used in any data load.

48. You Want To Set Up A New Repository In Bods. How Do You Create It?

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To create BODS Repository you need a database installed. You can use SQL Server, Oracle database, My SQL, SAP HANA, Sybase, etc. You have to create below users in database while installing BODS and to create Repositories. These users are required to login to different servers CMS Server, Audit Server. To create a new repository, you have to login to Repository manager.

49. How Do You Manage Object Versions In Bods?

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Central repository is used to control the version management of the objects and is used for multiuse development. Central Repository stores all the versions of an application object so it allows you to move to previous versions.

50. You Want To Generate The Quality Reports In Ds System, Data Validation, And Documentation. Where You Can See This?

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Data Services Management Console

51. What Is The Template Table?

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In Data Services, you can create a template table to move to target system that has same structure and data type as source table.

52. How Do You Check The Execution History Of A Job Or A Data Flow?

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DS Management Console → Job Execution History

53. What Is Sap Data Services Designer? What Are Main Etl Functions That Can Be Performed In Designer Tool?

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It is a developer tool which is used to create objects consist of data mapping, transformation, and logic. It is GUI based and work as designer for Data Services.
You can create various objects using Data Services Designer like Project, Jobs, Work Flow, Data Flow, mapping, transformations, etc.

54. How Do You Check Existing Objects In Ds Repository?

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In Object library in DS Designer.

55. How Do You Improve The Performance Of Data Flows Using Memory Datastore?

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You can create Datastore using memory as database type. Memory Datastore are used to improve the performance of data flows in real time jobs as it stores the data in memory to facilitate quick access and doesn’t require to go to original data source.

A memory Datastore is used to store memory table schemas in the repository. These memory tables get data from tables in Relational database or using hierarchical data files like XML message and IDocs.
The memory tables remain alive till job executes and data in memory tables can’t be shared between different real time jobs.

56. What Is Linked Data Store? Explain With An Example?

Ans:

There are various database vendors which only provides one way communication path from one database to another database. These paths are known as database links. In SQL Server, Linked server allows one way communication path from one database to other.

Example:
Consider a local database Server name “Product” stores database link to access information on remote database server called Customer. Now users that are connected to remote database server Customer can’t use the same link to access data in database server Product. User that are connected to “Customer” should have a separate link in data dictionary of the server to access the data in Product database server.

This communication path between two databases are called database link and Datastores which are created between these linked database relationships is known as linked Datastores.

There is a possibility to connect Datastore to another Datastore and importing an external database link as option of Datastore.

57. You Want To Import Application Metadata Into Repository. How You Can Perform This?

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Adapter Datastore allows you to import application metadata into repository. You can also access application metadata and you can also move batch and real time data between different applications and software.

58. What Are The Different Types Of Files Can Be Used As Source And Target File Format?

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1. 1. Delimited
2. 2. SAP Transport
3. 3. Unstructured Text
4. 4. Unstructured Binary
5. 5. Fixed Width

59. You Want To Extract Data From An Excel Work Book. How You Can Do This?

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You can use Microsoft Excel workbook as data source using file formats in Data Services. Excel work book should be available on Windows file system or Unix File system.

60. What Is The Use Of Data Flow In Ds?

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Data flow is used to extract, transform and load data from source to target system. All the transformations, loading and formatting occurs in dataflow.

61. Is It Possible That A Workflow Call Itself In Daa Services Job?

Ans:

Yes

62. Give An Example Of Work Flow In Production?

Ans:

There is a fact table that you want to update and you have created a data flow with the transformation. Now If you want to move the data from source system, you have to check last modification for fact table so that you extract only rows that has been added after last update.

In order to achieve this, you have to create one script which determines last update date and then pass this as input parameter to data flow.

You also have to check if data connection to a particular fact table is active or not. If it is not active, you need to setup a catch block which automatically sends an email to administrator to notify about this problem.

63. What Is The Use Of Conditionals?

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You can also add Conditionals to workflow. This allows you to implement If/Else/Then logic on the workflows.

64. What Is A Transformation In Data Services?

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Transforms are used to manipulate data sets as inputs and creating one or multiple outputs. There are various transforms that can be used in Data Services.

65. What Are The Common Transformations That Are Available In Data Services?

Ans:

• Data Integration
• Data Quality
• Platform
• Merge
• Query
• Text data processing

66. What Is The Use Of Query Transformation?

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This is most common transformation used in Data Services and you can perform below functions:

1. 1. Data filtering from sources
2. 2. Joining data from multiple sources
3. 3. Perform functions and transformations on data
4. 4. Column mapping from input to output schemas
5. 5. Assigning Primary keys
6. 6. Add new columns, schemas and functions resulted to output schemas
7. 7. As Query transformation is most commonly used transformation, so a shortcut is provided for this query in tool palette.

67. What Is An Embedded Data Flow?

Ans:

Embedded data flow is known as data flows which are called from another data flow in the design. The embedded data flow can contain multiple number of source and targets but only one input or output pass data to main data flow.

68. What Are The Different Types Of Embedded Data Flow?

Ans:

1. 1. One Input: Embedded data flow is added at the end of dataflow.
2. 2. One Output: Embedded data flow is added at the beginning of a data flow.
3. 3. No input or output: Replicate an existing data flow.

69. Suppose You Have Updated The Version Of Data Services Software? Is It Required To Update The Repository Version?

Ans:

If you update version of SAP Data Services, there is a need to update version of Repository. Below points should be considered when migrating a central repository to upgrade version:

Point 1 – Take the backup of central repository all tables and objects.

Point 2 – To maintain version of objects in data services, maintain a central repository for each version. Create a new central history with new version of Data Services software and copy all objects to this repository.

Point 3 – It is always recommended if you install new version of Data Services, you should upgrade your central repository to new version of objects.

Point 4 – Also upgrade your local repository to same version as different version of central and local repository may not work at the same time.

Point 5 – Before migrating the central repository, check in all the objects. As you don’t upgrade central and local repository simultaneously, so there is a need to check in all the objects. As once you have your central repository upgraded to new version, you will not be able to check in objects from local repository which is having older version of Data Services.

70. What Is Slowly Changing Dimension?

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SCDs are dimensions that have data that changes over time.

71. How Do You Manage Slowly Changing Dimensions? What Are The Fields Required In Managing Different Types If Scd?

Ans:

1. 1. SCD Type 1 No history preservation
2. 2. Natural consequence of normalization
3. 3. SCD Type 2 Preserving all history and new rows
4. 4. There are new rows generated for significant changes
5. 5. You need to use of a unique key
6. 6. There are new fields are generated to store history data
7. 7. You need to manage an Effective_Date field.
8. 8. SCD Type 3 Limited history preservation
9. 9. In this only two states of data are preserved – current and old

72. Is File Format In Data Services Type Of A Data Store?

Ans:

No, File format is not a datastore type.